With less than nine weeks to go until the 2026 Paralympic Games kick off in Italy, Canada’s wheelchair curling team is hard at work getting ready to compete.
But this year, a virtual reality program — developed in Alberta —is aiming to help the athletes bring home gold.
“To our knowledge, we don’t know of any other programs that are developed for seated users in the sense that they actually can see their body in the virtual simulation,” said Jennifer Dornstauder.
Dornstauder is the engineering technical lead behind the project, which was developed at Red Deer Polytechnic late last year.
“This takes away training environment constraints, training travel constraints, the physical constraints where you’re tapering training before a competition,” she said.
“You’re removing a lot of the physical elements when you might only be interested in tactics and strategy training.”
Canada’s wheelchair curling team has earned a spot on the podium at every Paralympics, the only country to achieve that feat. Part of the reason for that may be embracing innovation.
The virtual advantage
The sport, which some have nicknamed “chess on ice,” is different from its sister discipline in that there’s no sweeping, so there’s extra focus on strategy to ensure the rock goes where it needs to.
“We have to use technology to be able to make the shots that we want. And that’s the really cool part about the VR, it’s gonna be able to take our game to the next level,” said Dana Ferguson, the mixed doubles coach for the national program.
“We are all across the country right now. We need ways that we can train and be together even in different areas. And [the VR] will allow for that.”
One more perk? The simulation was created to look like the competition stadium, using photos from Curling Canada. That will help clear up mental space, said Collinda Joseph, who’s on Canada’s Paralympic team.
“It’ll take you a few days to get used to [the] environment, and we just don’t have that much time,” she explained.
“Having the VR set … even though you’re not there in person, I think it will help a lot to just sort of get that spatial visual of what the arena would look like — and the feeling.”
Engineers at Red Deer Polytechnic in central Alberta have developed a fully immersive virtual reality program that allows athletes to test out the ice and practice their shots, even when they’re not at the rink. CBC’s Lina Elsaadi went to check it out.
A sport that embraces innovation
Joseph is excited by the use of VR in wheelchair curling. She said over the years, there’s been a lot of development when it comes to equipment used in the sport.
“[Something] happening more now than it did when I first started, is the collection of data and the analytics … and how that affects tactical and potentially strategic decisions.”
Wheelchair curler Terry Fowler said he believes that’s in part due to the mentality of many parasport athletes.
“People in wheelchairs are always looking for something to improve upon … anything that can help us out, like, even a little bit, we’re more than welcome to bring that in, try it out.”
But to Joseph, it’s a sentiment much stronger in wheelchair curling culture than other sports she’s played. She thinks that could be in part due to the sport’s relatively young age.
“I didn’t feel the same sort of commitment to supporting change and supporting technology … that can have a significant impact, as much as I experience in wheelchair curling,” Joseph said.
“It’s a completely different environment and it’s really great.”
National team member Gil Dash added that “doing absolutely everything you possibly can … might not seem a big deal to a lot of people, but that can be the difference between a medal – a bronze, silver or gold.”
Developing the tech
Creating tech for para athletes is something Dornstauder has worked on before, which is why at an industry conference this summer, a spontaneous chat with Curling Canada officials led to the organization revealing to her they had been looking for something similar to an online simulator, aptly named Chess On Ice.
Soon after, development began. Just four months later, the specially designed VR software was built. According to Dornstauder, building such novel technology was eye-opening, and “absolutely a challenge for the animators and the programmers.”
“Normally, in a lot of VR games, you’ll find [the ice doesn’t] really have a lot of reflectivity … [and] there isn’t a lot of detail,” said Kenzie Wylie, the lead animator. “It’s an important part of immersion.”
Aside from ice, there were challenges around in-game physics, equipment and the wheelchair itself as much of the development crew had never played the sport.
But team members, including kinesiologists and programmers, worked through many revisions with Curling Canada before a working version was complete.
Some next steps the team hopes to include in the software are a heat map, a multiplayer mode within the game and a working scoreboard.
And there are hopes that in the future the VR can help develop newer athletes, and introduce the sport to others.
“It’s gonna give people more opportunities,” said Fowler. “It’ll bring more people the experience on what we deal with through curling.”
